Concept artists who's who

Jen Zee

Jen zee is concept artists and art director for supergiant for supergiant games, that joined in march of 2010. and is credited for there work on bastion, hades, hades 2, game of Thrones, lord of the rings, call of Cthulhu and Warhammer.

Jen Zee was born some time in 1984 and is from san Jose California. She studied art in the US for her graduate studies. She started her first job with Gaia Online and made the iodometric environmental designs. She then after joined supergiant as the company's third employee, as an temporary contractor , to work on supergiant's first game Bastion.

Her aesthetic is influenced by the East Asian environment she grew up in ,Hong Kong and the Western art approaches she learned in the US. Examples of her work, concept art/early sketch's and final design. 

             Zagreus early sketch 

                                                              Zagreus concept art

The top art work shows early concepts of Zagreus a character in Hades, a game the Jen was the art director for and to which has a Greek mythos theme. By the look of the concept of the game you can see examples of ancient Greek clothing with the robes and the constant of main color of Red and black that continues to the early sketch , concept art and finalized design.

                                Zagreus artwork

This is the in game final in game render of Zagreus.

you see how some aspects of the final out come  continue on form the concept like color scheme and tone. one thing I think stands out the most about the design is the use of black for shading, especially on his  left red eye and on the skulls, that give of a underworld/hellish fell. another thing that I found interesting is little neo purple and green highlights you can see around his body that give of a unique feel.

Another thing i find interesting about the design is the inky brush that could be used. it semes similar to something comic book artists might use like dan mora.

  

dan mora batman example.

 

                                       Transistor

the most interesting part about this art work is the dynamic pose of the character and the light source of the sword illuminating on the face of the character.

the background design is also unique especially the yellow patterns and illuminating teal.  

                                                  Prometheus

this is more resent art work from her, based of the Olympic god/Titan of fire who is known for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to the humans which angered the god Zeus and sent an eagle to attack his liver that would heal every day. The reason why i think this is important is because if you know Prometheus lore/mythos then you can see examples for this  in his design the Zee made. his hand being on fire, the large eagle the towers over him(which has a similar design to Zeus in game) and the bandages that cover his liver.  

 

Zeus design for example

                                                  

                                Environmental illustration

                                                   by

                                               Jen Zee

I couldn't find any name for this illustration but i believe its from "Transistor". the thing that caught my eye first about this illustration was the tone used for the coloring. the whole scene feels cold, aminos and futuristic, but the lower level feels more colder because of the fog and its muted yellow.  

Another aspect i like about this piece is light from the streetlight and lamp lights giving of low brightness that doesn't really help bright streets due to the yellow moon light lighting up the buildings.

                                                             

 compare and contrast.

 While doing research on Zee I found out that one of there artists that inspired there art work at an early age was Tetsuya Nomura character art from Final fantasy VII. Tetsuya is Japanese game artists who's known for working on final fantasy 7, kingdom hearts, parasite eve and the world ends with you. 

                     cloud strife

                             by

                 Tetsuya Nomura

looking at Tetsuya early art work with final fantasy 7

theses the usually Manga art style of big eyes, spikey hair and a weapon that is similar or too big for the character to hold.

another thing i notice about Tetsuya's art style is dull natural colors on cloud's clothing, comported to his eye and hair color being bright color tones.  

    snowy bastion art

               by

           Jen zee

      

This was one of the oldest art works from Zee that i could find. the character design has similar characteristics to Tatsuya's work before, like the spikey hair,  big eyes and large weapons.

most resent artwork

               Tidus

                  by

        Tetsuya Nomura

I couldn't find many art work form Tetsuya that was resent ,2023-2024, but i found this art work of tidus that from 2022. the difference of this art work compared to his older work is the more realistic mouth and more accrete anatomy compared to cloud. 

   

                   Melinoe art

                           by

                       Jen zee

comparing Zee more modern work to Tetsuya's the character's have more realistic characteristics, especially around the lip area. another comparison is the lighting on both characters like the highlights on there hair and clothing.

Another thing i notice about both the current styles are how there hair style is less spikey/anime like.

Conclusion

By studying and researching Jen Zee's art work I've learned about how highlighting and using colorful colors and using contrasting colors/color wheel. Another thing i learned from recaching Zee was how you could use real life event, mythos and research on topics like culture and history to design character along side your own imagination. My last thoughts are on how Zee used her environment, culture to use as a way to build up my art style.     

Referencing.

https://www.creativeuncut.com/art_hades-2_a.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jen_Zee#Hades_and_Hades_II 

https://conceptartworld.com/artists/jen-zee/

https://www.creativeuncut.com/art_hades_a.html

https://jenzeejunk.blogspot.com/2013/06/transistor-into-pixel.html